An Author's Reaction
by I AM ZE BETA
Summary: An avid RonxHermione fan finds out that JKR said the pairing would not work. Follow his reaction to the news. PARODY!


**A/N: I wrote this parody as a tribute to J.K. Rowling's recent announcement. This is my perception of how RonxHermione fans will react, I am not, nor have I ever been a fan of this pairing, this is for comedic purposes only. As always, **

** .ENJOY**

I sat at my desk, typing up the last few lines of my newest fanfic: The Ginger and The Granger. It was an epic, almost 200,000 words, and featured my favorite pairing, Ronald Weasley, and Hermione Granger.

_He leaned in then, and gently pressed his lips to her. "I love you 'Mione, and I will always be with you."_

_ The frizzy haired girl flushed at the contact and the implications of the phrase. Since Ron had completed his end of the deal, Hermione grabbed her fiancé's hand, and marched down the corridor towards the Room of Requirement, her mind set on one thing. _

"There," I muttered, a feeling of satisfaction welling up in me. "Just a hint of what will happen, but not so much that I'll need to bump up the rating." I sat there, reveling in the feeling of success, it was my first multi-shot fic, and if I could say so myself, it was pretty good.

I logged onto Fanfiction, and headed over to my profile. Converting the entire story's file to a .docx, I sent it to my beta, and logged out, content with waiting until she could edit it before publishing. I had waited until all 39 chapters were complete, before posting any; I refused to be an author that would abandon his work. But now it was ready.

Eager to pass the time, I quickly signed into Facebook, hoping that something there would occupy me for the next several hours. As I meandered through hundreds of boring statuses, thousands of stupid pictures from so-called humor sights, and an insane amount of ' _ _ liked this' posts, I found it, one of my friends, a fellow writer Stormplains, had shared a CNN article onto my page.

"JK Rowling says Hermione should have married Harry Potter, not Ron." The headline blared. A sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I skimmed through the article,

"_Rowling says Ron and Hermione would have needed relationship counseling."_

_"I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That's how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron."_

_"I know, I'm sorry, I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I'm absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility."_

It couldn't be so, Hermione was meant to be with Harry? I felt like I had been punched in the gut by my best friend, for that's what they were, real or not, I truly felt like I had been friends with the Potter-Weasley extended family, and for all extents and purposes, I thought of myself as Harry's friend.

Yet, I looked back on the series, and I could see where Rowling was coming from, Hermione was too smart to marry someone who had almost gotten her killed, and there was no doubt that the fault of the troll attack lay solely at the feet of one Ronald Billius Weasley.

_Hadn't Ron defended Hermione against Malfoy in Chamber of Secrets? To be fair, the Slug-Eating hex failed because of his broken wand, but still he tried._

Suprisingly, a voice answered from the depths of my subxonscious. **Yes**,** but his family had had a feud with the Malfoy's for centuries, likely he would have defended anyone he could to have had a chance to get his hands on the smug ferret.**

**Besides, look at 3****rd**** year, when Ron thought that Crookshanks had eaten Scabbers? How did he react? He blamed Hermione, and put incredible stress on their friendship, even after it was proved that he was wrong, the git never apologized! Furthermore, he didn't even go on the time travel mission with Harry and Hermione, and it is widely believed, that that is when feelings started to emerge! **

_ Hey! You can't blame Ron for that! He was in the Hospital Wing with a broken leg; did you expect him to try something stupid?_

**Why not? He's done something stupid every other time. Look at the TriWizard Tournament: he blamed his so-called best friend for something that he should have known Harry would never do. He called Harry fame-seeking, and only apologized when it was revealed that Harry really could have died while fighting that damn Horntail. **

** And don't even get me started on the Yule Ball: Ron let Harry ask Padma Patil out for him, and then treated her like shit at the Ball. He didn't dance with her once, and didn't even care when she went off with that boy from Beauxbatons, he was too busy fantasizing about Hermione, and mentally jerking to her dress! **

_ That's because he did it for love! He loved Hermione so much, but was afraid to say anything, and then while she's at the Ball with someone who is essentially his idol, he snapped, what would you do if our crush went out with our idol? Probably the same damn thing!_

**That's bullshit and you know it! We would be just fine, and even if we weren't, I could never see either one of us saying that to her! We are plenty mature enough to be happy for her if she decided to date someone else! You're missing the point anyway, that was lust not love dipshit, and Harry didn't yell at her and Krum, he stood up for them to Ron! **

_ So what! He was 14, when we were 14, we did some pretty stupid shit. Remember the summer we tried to fly, or when we thought jumping off of the roof onto a trampoline was a good idea? I do, and we were content with our stupidity, how do you know Ron hadn't changed by the end of Deathly Hallows?_

**Because, he did some stupid shit then too if you recall. He ran out on Harry and Hermione, and as you well know, many H/Hr shippers claim that they had a relationship develop during that time. We even read one where they were screwing like bunnies in that tent! The point though is that Ron was not mature enough to handle Hermione, and most shippers don't know a relationship from a relationshit! One kiss does not equal a relationship, and that was the most those two shared in canon. Don't even bring in that epilogue, it is such bullshit that I can still smell it months later! Should I continue by bringing in the train wreck of Half-blood Prince, or do you get the point?**

I collapsed into my desk chair, my subconscious, who was now my conscious mind, made excellent points. Perhaps Ron really wasn't suited for Hermione. But was Harry? Thinking over the seven books, I came to the conclusion that yes he was. He had stood up for her to Ron in first year, again in third, fourth, sixth multiple times, and even seventh. Ron however had only displayed true friendship a handful of times, all of them under extreme stress.

Just then, my computer pinged. My beta had sent me back the fic. Opening it up, I skimmed through her changes, slowly becoming sick to my stomach as I read. How could I have ever felt that these two made a good couple? Every word made me flinch, there was no chance that anyone could believe that these two could stay together, and yet I had written over 200,000 words about it!

Only one option was left, with a slight hesitation, I deleted the file sent by my beta. I wiped my Fanfiction account of all traces of _The Ginger and the Granger,_ and then moved on to my hard drive. Again, I wiped it clean, only relaxing when the last of my files were deleted, now nobody had to read that garbage again.

I still felt guilty for having written it, and in my mind, there was one easy way to fix it. Opening up my word processor, I began typing:

"_Potter! Weasley! Will you pay attention?" _

_Professor McGonagall's irritated voice cracked like a whip through the Transfiguration class on Thursday, and Harry and Ron both jumped and looked up. _

_It was the end of the lesson; they had finished their work; the guinea fowl they had been changing into guinea pigs had been shut away in a large cage on Professor McGonagall's desk (Neville's still had feathers); they had copied down their homework from the blackboard ("Describe, with examples, the ways in which Transforming Spells must be adapted when performing Cross-Species Switches"}. _

_The bell was due to ring at any moment, and Harry and Ron, who had been having a sword fight with a couple of Fred and George's fake wands at the back of the class, looked up, Ron holding a tin parrot and Harry, a rubber haddock. _

"_Now that Potter and Weasley have been kind enough to act their age," said Professor McGonagall, with an angry look at the pair of them as the head of Harry's haddock drooped and fell silently to the floor - Ron's parrot's beak had severed it moments before - "I have something to say to you all. _

"_The Yule Ball is approaching - a traditional part of the Triwizard Tournament and an opportunity for us to socialize with our foreign guests. Now, the ball will be open only to fourth years and above - although you may invite a younger student if you wish -" _

_Lavender Brown let out a shrill giggle. Parvati Patil nudged her hard in the ribs, her face working furiously as she too fought not to giggle. They both looked around at Harry, Professor McGonagall ignored them, which Harry thought was distinctly unfair, as she had just told off him and Ron. _

"_Dress robes will be worn," Professor McGonagall continued, "and the ball will start at eight o'clock on Christmas Day, finishing at midnight in the Great Hall. Now then -" _

_Professor McGonagall stared deliberately around the class. _

"_The Yule Ball is of course a chance for us all to - er - let our hair down," she said, in a disapproving voice. _

_Lavender giggled harder than ever, with her hand pressed hard against her mouth to stifle the sound. Harry could see what was funny this time: Professor McGonagall, with her hair in a tight bun, looked as though she had never let her hair down in any sense._

"_But that does NOT mean," Professor McGonagall went on, "that we will be relaxing the _

_standards of behavior we expect from Hogwarts students. I will be most seriously displeased if a _

_Gryffindor student embarrasses the school in any way." _

_The bell rang, and there was the usual scuffle of activity as everyone packed their bags and swung them onto their shoulders. _

_Professor McGonagall called above the noise, "Potter - a word, if you please." _

_Assuming this had something to do with his headless rubber haddock, Harry proceeded gloomily to the teacher's desk. Professor McGonagall waited until the rest of the class had gone, and then said, "Potter, the champions and their partners -" _

"_What partners?" said Harry. _

_Profesor McGonagall looked suspiciously at him, as though she thought he was trying to be funny. _

"_Your partners for the Yule Ball, Potter," she said coldly. "Your dance partners." _

_Harry's insides seemed to curl up and shrivel. _

"_Dance partners?" He felt himself going red. "I don't dance," he said quickly. _

"_Oh yes, you do," said Professor McGonagall irritably. "That's what I'm telling you. Traditionally, the champions and their partners open the ball." _

_Harry had a sudden mental image of himself in a top hat and tails, accompanied by a girl in the sort of frilly dress Aunt Petunia always wore to Uncle Vernon's work parties. _

"_I'm not dancing," he said. _

"_It is traditional," said Professor McGonagall firmly. "You are a Hogwarts champion, and you will do what is expected of you as a representative of the school. So make sure you get yourself a partner, Potter." _

"_But-I don't-" _

"_You heard me, Potter," said Professor McGonagall in a very final sort of way_

"_Yes Ma'am." Harry said dejectedly. He turned and walked towards the door. _

"_Potter?" McGonagall called. _

_He turned back towards the professor expectantly. _

"_Might I suggest that you ask Ms. Granger to the Ball. Your friendship would go a long way towards making it an enjoyable evening." _

_His face flushed, Harry nodded quickly and scurried out of the room. A wry smile crossed the lips of the Transfiguration professor. "I hope you make it Potter, I really do."_


End file.
